End Of The World:Predictions or Chances?

Human activity is severely disrupting almost all
life on the planet, which surely doesn't help matters. The current rate of
extinctions is, by some estimates, 10,000 times the average in the fossil
record. At present, we may worry about snail darters and red squirrels in
abstract terms. But the next statistic on the list could be us

Natural Disasters

Asteroid impact: once a disaster scenario gets the
cheesy Hollywood treatment, it's hard to take it seriously. But there is no question
that a cosmic interloper will hit Earth, and we won't have to wait millions of
years for it to happen. In 1908 a 200-foot-wide comet fragment slammed into the
atmosphere and exploded over the Tunguska region in Siberia, Russia, with
nearly 1,000 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Astronomers estimate similar-sized events occur every one to three centuries.
Benny Peiser, an anthropologist-cum-pessimist at Liverpool John Moores
University in England, claims that impacts have repeatedly disrupted human
civilization. As an example, he says one killed 10,000 people in the Chinese
city of Chi'ing-yang in 1490. Many scientists question his interpretations:
Impacts are most likely to occur over the ocean, and small ones that happen over
land are most likely to affect unpopulated areas. But with big asteroids, it
doesn't matter much where they land. Objects more than a half-mile wide—which
strike Earth every 250,000 years or so—would touch off firestorms followed by
global cooling from dust kicked up by the impact. Humans would likely survive,
but civilization might not. An asteroid five miles wide would cause major
extinctions, like the one that may have marked the end of the age of dinosaurs.
For a real chill, look to the Kuiper belt, a zone just beyond Neptune that
contains roughly 100,000 ice-balls more than 50 miles in diameter. The Kuiper
belt sends a steady rain of small comets earthward. If one of the big ones
headed right for us, that would be it for pretty much all higher forms of life,
even cockroaches.

Gamma-ray burst:If you could watch the sky with gamma-ray vision, you might think you
were being stalked by cosmic paparazzi. Once a day or so, you would see a
bright flash appear, briefly outshine everything else, and then vanish. These
gamma-ray bursts, astrophysicists recently learned, originate in distant
galaxies and are unfathomably powerful—as much as 10 quadrillion (a one
followed by 16 zeros) times as energetic as the sun. The bursts probably result
from the merging of two collapsed stars. Before the cataclysmal event, such a
double star might be almost completely undetectable, so we'd likely have no
advance notice if one is lurking nearby. Once the burst begins, however, there
would be no missing its fury. At a distance of 1,000 light-years—farther than
most of the stars you can see on a clear night—it would appear about as bright
as the sun. Earth's atmosphere would initially protect us from most of the
burst's deadly X rays and gamma rays, but at a cost. The potent radiation would
cook the atmosphere, creating nitrogen oxides that would destroy the ozone
layer. Without the ozone layer, ultraviolet rays from the sun would reach the
surface at nearly full force, causing skin cancer and, more seriously, killing
off the tiny photosynthetic plankton in the ocean that provide oxygen to the
atmosphere and bolster the bottom of the food chain. All the gamma-ray bursts
observed so far have been extremely distant, which implies the events are rare.
Scientists understand so little about these explosions, however, that it's
difficult to estimate the likelihood of one detonating in our galactic neighborhood.

Collapse of the vacuum:In the book Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut
popularized the idea of "ice-nine," a form of water that is far more
stable than the ordinary kind, so it is solid at room temperature. Unleash a
bit of it, and suddenly all water on Earth transforms to ice-nine and freezes
solid. Ice-nine was a satirical invention, but an abrupt, disastrous phase
transition is a possibility. Very early in the history of the universe,
according to a leading cosmological model, empty space was full of energy. This
state of affairs, called a false vacuum, was highly precarious. A new, more
stable kind of vacuum appeared and, like ice-nine, it quickly took over. This
transition unleashed a tremendous amount of energy and caused a brief runaway
expansion of the cosmos. It is possible that another, even more stable kind of
vacuum exists, however. As the universe expands and cools, tiny bubbles of this
new kind of vacuum might appear and spread at nearly the speed of light. The
laws of physics would change in their wake, and a blast of energy would dash
everything to bits. "It makes for a beautiful story, but it's not very
likely," says Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton,
New Jersey. He says he worries more about threats that scientists are more
certain of—such as rogue black holes.

Rogue black holes:Our galaxy is full of black holes, collapsed stellar corpses just a
dozen miles wide. How full? Tough question. After all, they're called black
holes for a reason. Their gravity is so strong they swallow everything, even
the light that might betray their presence. David Bennett of Notre Dame
University in Indiana managed to spot two black holes recently by the way they
distorted and amplified the light of ordinary, more distant stars. Based on
such observations, and even more on theoretical arguments, researchers
guesstimate there are about 10 million black holes in the Milky Way. These
objects orbit just like other stars, meaning that it is not terribly likely
that one is headed our way. But if a normal star were moving toward us, we'd
know it. With a black hole there is little warning. A few decades before a
close encounter, at most, astronomers would observe a strange perturbation in
the orbits of the outer planets. As the effect grew larger, it would be
possible to make increasingly precise estimates of the location and mass of the
interloper. The black hole wouldn't have to come all that close to Earth to
bring ruin; just passing through the solar system would distort all of the
planets' orbits. Earth might get drawn into an elliptical path that would cause
extreme climate swings, or it might be ejected from the solar system and go
hurtling to a frigid fate in deep space.

Giant solar flares:Solar flares—more properly known as coronal mass ejections—are enormous
magnetic outbursts on the sun that bombard Earth with a torrent of high-speed
subatomic particles. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field negate the
potentially lethal effects of ordinary flares. But while looking through old
astronomical records, Bradley Schaefer of Yale University found evidence that
some perfectly normal-looking, sun like stars can brighten briefly by up to a
factor of 20. Schaefer believes these stellar flickers are caused by super
flares, millions of times more powerful than their common cousins. Within a few
hours, a super flare on the sun could fry Earth and begin disintegrating the
ozone layer. Although there is persuasive evidence that our sun doesn't engage
in such excess, scientists don't know why super flares happen at all, or
whether our sun could exhibit milder but still disruptive behaviour. And while
too much solar activity could be deadly, too little of it is problematic as
well. Sallie Baliunas at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics says
many solar-type stars pass through extended quiescent periods, during which
they become nearly 1 percent dimmer. That might not sound like much, but a
similar downturn in the sun could send us into another ice age. Baliunas cites
evidence that decreased solar activity contributed to 17 of the 19 major cold
episodes on Earth in the last 10,000 years.

Reversal of Earth's magnetic field:Every few hundred thousand years Earth's
magnetic field dwindles almost to nothing for perhaps a century, then gradually
reappears with the north and south poles flipped. The last such reversal was
780,000 years ago, so we may be overdue. Worse, the strength of our magnetic
field has decreased about 5 percent in the past century. Why worry in an age
when GPS has made compasses obsolete? Well, the magnetic field deflects
particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic
subatomic particles from deep space. Without magnetic protection, these
particles would strike Earth's atmosphere, eroding the already beleaguered
ozone layer. Also, many creatures navigate by magnetic reckoning. A magnetic
reversal might cause serious ecological mischief. One big caveat: "There
are no identifiable fossil effects from previous flips," says Sten
Odenwald of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "This is most
curious." Still, a disaster that kills a quarter of the population, like
the Black Plague in Europe, would hardly register as a blip in fossil records.

Flood-basalt volcanism: In 1783, the Laki volcano in
Iceland erupted, spitting out three cubic miles of lava. Floods, ash, and fumes
wiped out 9,000 people and 80 percent of the livestock. The ensuing starvation
killed a quarter of Iceland's population. Atmospheric dust caused winter
temperatures to plunge by 9 degrees in the newly independent United States. And
that was just a baby's burp compared with what the Earth can do. Sixty-five
million years ago, a plume of hot rock from the mantle burst through the crust
in what is now India. Eruptions raged century after century, ultimately
unleashing a quarter-million cubic miles of lava—the Laki eruption 100,000
times over. Some scientists still blame the Indian outburst, not an asteroid, for
the death of the dinosaurs. An earlier, even larger event in Siberia occurred
just about the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, the most thorough
extermination known to paleontology. At that time 95 percent of all species
were wiped out. Sulphurous volcanic gases produce acid rains. Chlorine-bearing
compounds present yet another threat to the fragile ozone layer—a noxious brew
all around. While they are causing short-term destruction, volcanoes also
release carbon dioxide that yields long-term greenhouse-effect warming. The
last big pulse of flood-basalt volcanism built the Columbia River plateau about
17 million years ago. We're ripe for another.

Global epidemics: If Earth doesn't do us in, our
fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always
coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague
killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20
million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar
death toll and is still going strong. From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centres
for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the
United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have
developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land
development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel
means diseases can spread faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious
disease expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described
the situation as "like trying to swim against the current of a raging
river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that
spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control,
perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years
ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross
MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was
extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into
the New World.

Human-Triggered Disasters

Global warming: The Earth is getting warmer, and
scientists mostly agree that humans bear some blame. It's easy to see how
global warming could flood cities and ruin harvests. More recently, researchers
like Paul Epstein of Harvard Medical School have raised the alarm that a
balmier planet could also assist the spread of infectious disease by providing
a more suitable climate for parasites and spreading the range of tropical
pathogens (see #8). That could include crop diseases which, combined with
substantial climate shifts, might cause famine. Effects could be even more
dramatic. At present, atmospheric gases trap enough heat close to the surface
to keep things comfortable. Increase the global temperature a bit, however, and
there could be a bad feedback effect, with water evaporating faster, freeing
water vapor (a potent greenhouse gas), which traps more heat, which drives
carbon dioxide from the rocks, which drives temperatures still higher. Earth
could end up much like Venus, where the high on a typical day is 900 degrees
Fahrenheit. It would probably take a lot of warming to initiate such a runaway
greenhouse effect, but scientists have no clue where exactly the tipping point
lies.

Ecosystem collapse:Images of slaughtered elephants and burning rain forests capture
people's attention, but the big problem—the overall loss of biodiversity—is a
lot less visible and a lot more serious. Billions of years of evolution have
produced a world in which every organism's welfare is intertwined with that of
countless other species. A recent study of Isle Royale National Park in Lake
Superior offers an example. Snowy winters encourage wolves to hunt in larger
packs, so they kill more moose. The decline in moose population allows more balsam
fir saplings to live. The fir trees pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,
which in turn influences the climate. It's all connected. To meet the demands
of the growing population, we are clearing land for housing and agriculture,
replacing diverse wild plants with just a few varieties of crops, transporting
plants and animals, and introducing new chemicals into the environment. At
least 30,000 species vanish every year from human activity, which means we are
living in the midst of one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history.
Stephen Kellert, a social ecologist at Yale University, sees a number of ways
people might upset the delicate checks and balances in the global ecology. New
patterns of disease might emerge , he says, or pollinating insects might become
extinct, leading to widespread crop failure. Or as with the wolves of Isle
Royale, the consequences might be something we'd never think of, until it's too
late.

Biotech disaster: While we are extinguishing natural
species, we're also creating new ones through genetic engineering. Genetically
modified crops can be hardier, tastier, and more nutritious. Engineered
microbes might ease our health problems. And gene therapy offers an elusive
promise of fixing fundamental defects in our DNA. Then there are the possible
downsides. Although there is no evidence indicating genetically modified foods
are unsafe, there are signs that the genes from modified plants can leak out
and find their way into other species. Engineered crops might also foster
insecticide resistance. Longtime skeptics like Jeremy Rifkin worry that the
resulting superweeds and superpests could further destabilize the stressed
global ecosystem . Altered microbes might prove to be unexpectedly difficult to
control. Scariest of all is the possibility of the deliberate misuse of
biotechnology. A terrorist group or rogue nation might decide that anthrax
isn't nasty enough and then try to put together, say, an airborne version of
the Ebola virus. Now there's a showstopper.

Environmental toxins:From Donora, Pennsylvania, to Bhopal, India,
modern history abounds with frightening examples of the dangers of industrial
pollutants. But the poisoning continues. In major cities around the world, the
air is thick with diesel particulates, which the National Institutes of Health
now considers a carcinogen. Heavy metals from industrial smokestacks circle the
globe, even settling in the pristine snows of Antarctica. Intensive use of
pesticides in farming guarantees runoff into rivers and lakes. In high doses,
dioxins can disrupt fetal development and impair reproductive function—and
dioxins are everywhere. Your house may contain polyvinyl chloride pipes,
wallpaper, and siding, which belch dioxins if they catch fire or are incinerated.
There are also the unknown risks to think about. Every year NIH adds to its
list of cancer-causing substances—the number is up to 218. Theo Colburn of the
World Wildlife Fund argues that dioxins and other, similar chlorine-bearing
compounds mimic the effects of human hormones well enough that they could
seriously reduce fertility. Many other scientists dispute her evidence, but if
she's right, our chemical garbage could ultimately threaten our survival.

Global war:There are nine countries in the world that admit
having atomic weapons and they are often referred to as the Nuclear Club. Five of these countries are classed as Nuclear
Weapons States which is a title and status conferred on them by the Nuclear
Non-proliferation Treaty. In order of nuclear acquisition they are USA, Russia,
Britain, France and China.India,
Pakistan and North Korea, none of who are current signatories to the Treaty
have all undertaken recent nuclear weapons tests. It is widely believed that
Israel has nuclear weapons as may South Africa.Israel refuses to comment and South Africa states that it manufactured six
atomic bombs (probably at Valindaba) but has now decommissioned them. There may
well be more countries that secretly developed nuclear weapons or acquired them
on the black market.

The end of the world scenario is simple.For unknown reasons the nuclear powers start
using their weapons on each other and MAD – or Mutually Assured Destruction –
occurs.The devastation from
thermonuclear blasts would be bad enough and would send what was left of
mankind back to the Stone Age.Worse
though would be the ongoing effects of nuclear radiation and nuclear
winter.The radiation would engulf the
planet on a scale that can’t be imagined.Within 6 months anyone who was not “blown up” would be very sick. Within
24 months just about everyone is dead. Disease, residual radiation pockets,
starvation, secondary pollutants, poisoned rain and freezing temperatures will
just about finish off humanity.It is
very possible that a select few will survive on stockpiled rations in deep underground
bunkers but even they will have to face a radically changed world if they ever
return to the surface. (Amtrak Wars)Humanity as we know it would be gone.

Robots Invasion: People create smart robots, which
turn against us and take over the world. Yawn. We've seen this in movies, TV,
and comic books for decades. After all these years, look around and still—no
smart robots. Yet Hans Moravec, one of the founders of the robotics department
of Carnegie Mellon University, remains a believer. By 2040, he predicts,
machines will match human intelligence, and perhaps human consciousness. Then
they'll get even better. He envisions an eventual symbiotic relationship
between human and machine, with the two merging into
"postbiologicals" capable of vastly expanding their intellectual
power. Marvin Minsky, an artificial-intelligence expert at MIT, foresees a
similar future: People will download their brains into computer-enhanced
mechanical surrogates and log into nearly boundless files of information and
experience. Whether this counts as the end of humanity or the next stage in
evolution depends on your point of view. Minsky's vision might sound vaguely
familiar. After the first virtual-reality machines hit the marketplace around
1989, feverish journalists hailed them as electronic LSD, trippy illusion
machines that might entice the user in and then never let him out. Sociologists
fretted that our culture, maybe even our species, would whither away. When the
actual experience of virtual reality turned out to be more like trying to play
Pac-Man with a bowling ball taped to your head, the talk died down. To his
credit, Minsky recognizes that the merger of human and machine lies quite a few
years away.

Mass insanity:While physical health has improved in most parts of the world over the
past century, mental health is getting worse. The World Health Organization
estimates that 500 million people around the world suffer from a psychological
disorder. By 2020, depression will likely be the second leading cause of death
and lost productivity, right behind cardiovascular disease. Increasing human
life spans may actually intensify the problem; because people have more years
to experience the loneliness and infirmity of old age. Americans over 65
already are disproportionately likely to commit suicide. Gregory Stock, a
biophysicist at the University of California at Los Angeles, believes medical
science will soon allow people to live to be 200 or older. If such an extended
life span becomes common, it will pose unfathomable social and psychological
challenges. Perhaps 200 years of accumulated sensations will overload the human
brain, leading to a new kind of insanity or fostering the spread of doomsday
cults, determined to reclaim life's endpoint. Perhaps the current trends of
depression and suicide among the elderly will continue. One possible
solution—promoting a certain kind of mental well-being with psychoactive drugs
such as Prozac—heads into uncharted waters. Researchers have no good data on
the long-term effects of taking these medicines.

Mass genetic mutation: Now this is a very scary
scenario that needs some background information. Bacteria, Amoeba,
Plants, Animals and even you are all living organisms often just referred to as
“life” and are determined by genes passed down through the ages. Genes are
based on DNA that has taken billions of years to evolve into the complex “life”
that exists today. These genes do mutate naturally but usually with tiny
changes over a long period of time. If they’re “good mutations” then the
species improves and evolves as the new mutation is spread through the breeding
population. If it’s “bad mutation” then usually the creature often fails
to survive long enough to pass it on or fails to compete with its stronger
competitors or predators. However some bad genetic mutations make it
through and spread throughout the population. Some horrible genetic
weaknesses that made it into the greater human population, and now cause
disease, include: Angelman Syndrome, Colour Blindness, Down Syndrome, Duchenne
Muscular Dystrophy, Haemophilia, and Sickle-cell Disease.

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